That sounded hopeful. She had obviously decided to play at being an angel of mercy. Her eyes were wary, but brimming with good intent. At the moment nothing could suit Alan better. ‘I could murder a drink,’ he told her.

‘M...murder?’

He had forgotten how young she was. ‘I’m thirsty.’

‘I’ll find something.’ The concubine’s daughter set her basket on the edge of his pallet.

Alan put out a hand. ‘Wine would be good. It kills pain.’

Having poured a generous measure from a pottery bottle into an earthenware cup, St Clair’s daughter handed it to him. Alan noticed she was careful to avoid contact with his fingers. Ignoring this, he drank deep. It was a coarse red wine, flavoured with herbs. It warmed his stomach. Alan had never appreciated how much it meant to have a healthy, pain-free body until this moment. His pain dulled. She watched him. The girl, Gwenn, made him feel self-conscious, though he was dammed if he knew why this should be. ‘My thanks, Mistress Gwenn.’ He looked pointedly at the bottle.

The girl took the hint and thrust the bottle into his hands. ‘Here, you’d better have charge of this.’ Kneeling at his side, she unwrapped his makeshift bandages.

Pain knifed through him. ‘I hope to God you know what you’re doing.’

‘I do. Grandmama taught me.’ Her face clouded, but though her grief was fresh she did not give in to it. Head high, she waved at two yokels who were lurking in the doorway. ‘If you must watch, you can make yourselves useful. This man must be held down.’

‘I can hardly run away,’ Alan said dryly.

She flashed him a look. ‘Nonetheless, you must be restrained, or you’ll wreck the bone-setting.’

The two boys took hold.

‘Are you ready?’

Alan assented and gritted his teeth. Black pain swallowed him up, wrenched him out of the hall, and he was master of himself no more. He gave himself up to the agony and rode it out. After an eternity in a dark vortex with nothing to cling on to, the girl’s soft voice hooked him back. ‘There. You can relax now, Alan le Bret. It’s over.’

He came back slowly. He’d spilt the wine. He was sweating like a pig and he could hardly see for the perspiration running into his eyes. He could taste blood in his mouth. Lifting his fingers to his lips, he discovered he’d all but bitten them through. ‘My thanks,’ he managed to croak.

The two serfs had gone. His leg was neatly bandaged. He had new splints. ‘It doesn’t feel as though its mine.’

‘It will.’

Her eyes were steady. Candid, truthful eyes.

‘Will it set straight?’ An important question, that. Lame mercenaries didn’t have a prayer.

‘Like a lance,’ she assured him, dipping a cloth into a bowl of water. She began wiping his face as tenderly as though he were a babe.

‘Don’t do that.’ He tried to bat her hands away.

‘You’re all sooty, and you’re in no fit state to do it yourself.’

It unmanned Alan to have a maid like Gwenn Herevi washing him. ‘No amount of polishing will make me shine, mistress. I’m tarnished to the heart.’ Her steady, brown eyes flickered, but that was the only sign that she gave of having heard him, for the gentle, inexorable washing continued. Alan wanted to jerk his head away, but to his shame found that she was in the right, he hadn’t strength even for that. Fighting the pain had used up all of his reserves. The hall was rocking from side to side as though an enormous crowbar had been placed underneath it and a giant was levering it up and down. He endured in stoic silence while the room tilted.

‘You were very brave,’ the girl said, conversationally. ‘I should have screamed.’

Talking was the last thing Alan wanted to do, but he reminded himself that it might be useful to win the girl’s friendship. At Huelgastel, Alan had overheard de Roncier and the Dowager Countess discussing a statue and a gemstone; and in the fire, Izabel Herevi had babbled about Our Lady. She had said that she had given it to Gwenn. Was it the same statue? And what about the gem? Alan forced his bitten lips to smile. ‘I’m a soldier, I’m meant to be brave.’

The cloth was withdrawn. The large, brown eyes were thoughtful. ‘You’re a mercenary. I’ve never talked to a mercenary before.’

Alan sighed.

She stared at his purse which he had restrung about his neck. ‘And you make your daily bread by killing people.’

Alan fastened the neck of his tunic and watched her tip back on her heels. With a faint feeling of alarm he recognised the light dawning in her eyes as a missionary one. Useful though her friendship might be, he’d not stand for that.

‘How many people would you say you have killed?’

Transferring his gaze to the fire, Alan refused to answer, hoping she’d change her tactics, or grow bored as children do. She was very young.

‘How many people have you killed?’ She rinsed out the cloth, and started on his face again.

Alan smothered an oath. Gwenn Herevi was persistent in more ways than one. ‘I provide a service, little Blanche,’ he said, and having disconcerted her with the French version of her name, he succeeded in pushing her hand away. ‘I help people fight their battles.’

‘Blanche?’ she wrinkled her nose.

‘Your name.’ Pain made his response more curt than he had intended. ‘Gwenn is Breton for Blanche, is it not?’

‘Aye, only no one ever calls me by the French version.’

He shrugged.

‘The Church condemns mercenaries,’ St Clair’s daughter went on without rancour.

‘Do you condemn me as a murderer?’ he asked softly.

‘You...you make your money by killing people, don’t you?’

He flung back his head and gave a creditable laugh. ‘Pot calling the kettle black, is it?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Lunging for a slender wrist, Alan pulled Gwenn Herevi so close that her face all but touched his. Beneath the grime from the fire, her skin was smooth as marble. Her breath was sweet and stirred his hair. ‘Who are you,’ he whispered in her ear, ‘to call me a murderer? You’ve been brought up on the proceeds of whoredom, when all’s said and done.’

The girl gave an inarticulate cry and wrenched herself free. ‘You...You...’ Poppy-red, she stammered to a halt.

‘Bastard?’ Alan only mouthed the word, but he could see from the way her face grew pinched that she understood him at once. To be quite certain, he rammed his message home with a callous smile, murmuring, ‘That name belongs to you also, sweet Blanche.’

The girl leapt to her feet and flung the cloths and bandages into her basket. Her mouth was set and her hands were trembling. She was speechless with hurt, and fury, and wounded pride. Alan’s conscience stabbed him, and he found himself wondering how low it was possible for a man to sink. He felt no triumph. It was as though he had kicked a puppy who had come running up tail a-wag, not a pleasant feeling. It was disturbing too, to find he was not yet able to put guilt behind him.

She snatched up her basket and twisted away, taking a second to dart a malevolent look at his broken limb. ‘I could kick it,’ she hissed through clenched teeth.

Alan looked straight at her. ‘Inadvisable,’ he said, smooth as silk. ‘It would undo all your good work.’ It was only after she had stormed up the stairs that it occurred to him that in wanting to kick his leg, she had mirrored his own guilty thoughts with peculiar accuracy.

***

In answer to her mother’s summons, Gwenn pushed past the faded, rotting rag that a generation ago might have been a creditable door-hanging, and entered the sleeping-alcove that Yolande was to share with her father. Her grandmother’s bier had been placed in the chapel, and Jean was organising a vigil for her. Gwenn would attend the vigil, as would her mother; none of them would rest that night. ‘Mama?’ Her mother was reclining on a moth-eaten mattress, a hand shielding her face.

The hand was removed and red-circled eyes met hers. ‘Come in, Gwenn.’